Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
Amid Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions to position himself as a self-proclaimed caliph for the world’s Muslims, an Istanbul-based Islamist network with international reach advances his government’s political agenda by exporting radical Islamist ideology — at times endorsing violence and armed jihad in the name of religion.
The network, operating under the name International Organization to Support the Prophet of Islam (Uluslararası Peygamber Efendimizi Koruma ve Destekleme Heyeti, IOSPI) is effectively a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that seeks to capitalize on Muslim protests sparked by defamation campaigns against the Prophet Muhammad.
In reality, the network seeks to recruit new followers for President Erdogan’s proxies, expand his government’s reach, bolster Turkey’s global influence campaigns and raise funds by exploiting Muslim communities’ sensitivities for political purposes.
The organization does not appear to be officially registered under Turkish law since there is no record of it at the Interior Ministry, which oversees the establishment of all associations in Turkey and conducts investigations when necessary.
Photos from a recent meeting at the headquarters of the Sosyal Doku (Social Fabric) Foundation — known for promoting violent jihad — reveal IOSPI’s direction and its efforts to cultivate ties with Turkish jihadist groups to further its agenda while expanding its influence abroad.
The meeting, held on February 4, 2025, was hosted by Nurettin (also written Nureddin) Yıldız, an antisemitic Turkish cleric who has called for armed jihad and inspired the assassin of the Russian ambassador to Turkey in 2016.
Yıldız has been shielded from legal consequences by the Erdogan government, despite his role in the radicalization of Turkish police officer Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, who assassinated Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov in Ankara. Turkish prosecutors never questioned Yıldız, even though the assassin frequently attended his private sermons. Yıldız also delivered fiery speeches for the Erdogan family’s youth-focused foundation, the Turkey Youth Foundation (TUGVA).
The cleric even traveled to Syria to meet with militant groups and frequently preached in support of violent jihadist campaigns worldwide. He advocated for the marriage of girls as young as 6 and issued a fatwa authorizing executions, hangings and the cutting off of hands and arms of people affiliated with the Gülen movement, a group critical of the Erdogan government.
Yıldız’s guests at the February meeting were identified by Nordic Monitor as Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figure Sheikh Mohamed Al-Sagheer, Sudanese Islamist cleric AbdulHay Yousif and Mauritanian cleric Muhammad al-Hasan bin Al-Deddew Al-Shanqiti. The meeting centered on pooling their resources to promote political Islam across the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
The IOSPI is one of many Islamist organizations used by President Erdogan to project power beyond Turkey’s borders, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Europe. It was established by some 50 Islamists in October 2021 with the backing of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian affiliate, Hamas.
At its inaugural event in 2021, Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader responsible for running the group’s political bureau abroad, was the keynote speaker. Meshaal is under the protection of Turkish intelligence agency MIT whenever he travels and stays in Turkey.
The IOSPI is led by al-Sagheer, who holds the title of secretary-general. He has access to the Turkish president, has cultivated strong ties with the Turkish government and regularly preaches to his followers through social media platforms. He has 1.6 million followers on X.
The organization is highly politicized, throwing its support behind President Erdogan, endorsing him during elections and working to undermine Arab governments that oppose the Muslim Brotherhood. It receives financial backing, logistical support and political protection from the Turkish government.
One of the founders of the organization is Yasin Aktay, who was serving as the deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling AKP and managing the party’s external relations at the time. Aktay, an advisor to Erdogan on Arab affairs, considers the Turkish president to be a caliph and views the Muslim Brotherhood as a proxy for the Turkish state.
Mehmet Görmez, a former president of Turkey’s top religious body, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), is another founder of the organization. He effectively transformed the Diyanet, with billions in funds and control over some 90,000 mosques in Turkey and abroad, into a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood network.
A third Turkish national among the founders is Enver Kılıçarslan, a convicted felon sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison in February 2002 for his membership in Hizbullah, a group separate from Lebanon’s Hezbollah and designated as a terrorist organization in Turkey. Trained in Iran in 1987, Kılıçarslan was assigned to serve under the late Turkish Hizbullah leader Hüseyin Velioğlu, who was killed in a gunfight with police during a raid on a safe house in Istanbul in January 2000.
Kılıçarslan was shielded from legal consequences by Erdogan, who secured the release of all convicted Hizbullah members from Turkish prisons as part of a deal made with Hizbullah in 2014. He now leads an Islamist group called the Union of Scholars and Madrasahs (İttihadul Ulema), which primarily serves the Kurdish population.
Ali Qaradaghi, the secretary-general of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a Muslim Brotherhood organization, is another founder. Qaradaghi has long resided in Turkey, where he has been granted VIP treatment in government protocols.
Abdulvahap Ekinci, another founder, is also a Turkish national. He serves as a board member of IUMS and acts as a liaison between the Muslim Brotherhood network and the Turkish government. Ekinci also runs a Turkish counterpart of the organization, called Uluslararası Müslüman Alimler Derneği (International Muslim Scholars Association, UMAD), which is registered with Turkey’s Interior Ministry.
The IOSPI established an academic center in Istanbul in February 2023, during an event where it honored Yemeni cleric Abdul Majeed al-Zindani for his decades-long work. In February 2004 al-Zindani was designated by the US Treasury Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” The department stated that al-Zindani had a “long history of working with bin Laden, notably serving as one of his spiritual leaders.” His name was later added to the UN Security Council’s list of terrorists. Al-Zindani passed away in Istanbul on April 22, 2024, at the age of 82.
The IOSPI has gained significant momentum following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and the power grab by jihadist leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, the head of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, as the new president of Syria. On January 30, 2025 al-Sagheer issued a letter congratulating al-Sharaa for what he described as an Islamic conquest bestowed by God and encouraged him to establish Islamic Sharia law in Syria.
